


Legolas Is A Pervy Dwarf-Fancier

by Not_You



Series: Welcome To Greyhame Academy [4]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Crush, Ent-Wives, Ents, Field Trip, First Kiss, Forests, Gardens & Gardening, Hair Braiding, Holding Hands, Interspecies Relationship(s), M/M, dietary requirements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-13 20:45:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4536729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_You/pseuds/Not_You
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Legolas holds Gimli's hand through the terrifying Forest of Fangorn while an Entwife explains how the old disagreement was resolved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Greyhame Academy offers field trips to Fangorn each semester, and Legolas is delighted to serve as an auxiliary tour guide for his friends, most of whom have never been before. Aragorn has, of course, and Frodo as well, but the younger hobbits, Boromir, and Gimli have never set foot there, and Legolas can hardly contain himself on the way. It's a bright Monday morning, warm in the sun and chilly out of it as the seasons turn toward winter, and the air smells crisp and clean even in the city.

The hobbits are riding with Frodo, and Arwen is bringing Aragorn in her own car. Legolas could have done the same, but then he would be missing out on Gimli and Boromir being nervous and pretending not to be, which is always funny. Gimli is just feeling a dwarf's natural anxiety about forests and is grumbling irritably about everything, but Boromir has been filled with Gondor's lies about the elves and is thereby great fun to tease, even if he's finally gaining some wisdom.

“They do _not_ turn obnoxious men of Gondor into mulch,” he says, arms crossed and eyes only about ninety percent certain.

Legolas is just thinking of making something up about times gone by and ancient precedents when Gimli puts a hand on his arm. “Don't be cruel, elf,” he says, and something about the tone and the weight of that wide, callused palm distracts him completely.

“You're no fun, dwarf,” he says, which is almost a reflex by now.

“Besides,” Gimli says, “if anyone gets mulched, it will be me.” He is the only dwarf on the bus, and Legolas leans down to put an arm around him, patting his far shoulder.

“I would never allow such a thing and you know it,” he says, and Gimli chuckles.

“I suppose I do, for all you love to torment our poor friend.”

Boromir sighs. “I suppose to such a sophisticated and ancient being as the prince of Greenwood, I'm just a hick from the sticks. I'll just have to live with the shame, somehow.”

“Poor darling,” Legolas coos, and Gimli rolls his eyes.

“I should have begged a ride with Frodo,” he grumbles, and Boromir laughs.

“Perhaps, but you would have had to fight me for it.”

“Missing your little ones already?” Legolas asks.

“...A little,” Boromir admits, going pink.

Legolas only has a few minutes to discourse on how unutterably cute that is before the bus pulls up to the edge of Fangorn Park. The wild forest lies beyond these smoothed hills and tree-lined avenues, but this place has its own beauty, and Legolas is happy to hop out and have grass beneath his feet again. The others follow, and the entire group assembles at the information kiosk, where Arwen is talking to the attendant while Aragorn naps on the clean grass like someone's pet dog. Merry and Pippin make a beeline for Boromir, each taking one of his hands as Frodo and Sam approach more slowly. Sam is glowing with excitement, bless his heart. His love for all things elven is alternately hilarious and unbearably sweet. Gimli hangs back a bit, the only dwarf present. Other elves are giving him strange looks, and Legolas can feel himself bristling. He goes and takes Gimli's arm, and helps pass out the unbleached, fully biodegradable brochures.

There are many paths in the park, but all of them lead to the forest. Their group takes the most direct route, and soon the forest looms up before them, dark and green and still. The sense of power here is almost a physical thing, and Legolas beams as they approach the gate. There's a little symbolic fence made of animal bones, and he can see it unnerving the hobbits.

“The Ents rule within these bounds, and mark the dominion of plantkind accordingly,” he says, “but they're very gentle people.”

“Indeed,” says, a slow, lovely voice like the rushing of wind through leaves, and an enormous figure comes striding out of the forest. “Men will make their gestures.” The Entwife is slender and has the mottled, grey-green skin of an apple tree, red fruit hanging on her branches like jewels braided into a woman's hair, and her big, luminous eyes look at them fondly. “Please, come in. Yes,” she says when Gimli tries to hang back, his eyes huge in his pale face, “you too, child of Aule.”

“Come along,” Legolas murmurs to him, “no harm will come to you.” Gimli doesn't say anything, but slides broad, powerful fingers between Legolas's own and follows him into the forest. The trees provide an emerald canopy, and the mossy loam is soft and dry underfoot. Legolas is always awed anew when he walks under the trees of Fangorn. He has seen the full life of more than a few great trees, but this forest is primordial, preserved from the First Age.

“My Westron name is Red Fruit, but you can call me Red,” their guide says, the trees reaching out to lightly stroke her with their branches as she passes by. Gimli huddles close to Legolas's side and glances around with wide eyes. He still has the little hatchet dwarves always carry in the city, but it was peace-bonded back at the Academy, because of course Ents do not like hatchets. “And all of this is Fangorn Forest,” Red says, gesturing with an elegant, many-fingered hand at the crowding trees around them, opulent with moss and vines and sheer peaceful antiquity. Legolas sighs, not paying much attention as Red names the types of trees and the virtues and history of each one. He's more interested in just seeing and hearing and feeling and smelling the beauty around him. Gimli being a part of that beauty is awkward, but unavoidable now. He likes the heat and solidity of him, and the worn-stone texture of his palm, and his courage as he looks around at this alien, fearful place.

Daylight ahead makes Legolas take proper notice of what Red is saying again, which is “Welcome to Fimbrethil Gardens,” as they approach a vast hedge. Legolas knows the old stories, of the long and tragic separation of Ents and Entwives, and it always touches his heart to see Fimbrethil in the embrace of Fangorn. Red tells the group of the old and foolish argument, and how at long last the divided people had become one again.

“We had thought that our husbands were unkind to their trees, to keep them wild and not to realize their full potential,” she says as they move from the forest to the vast garden with its fields and fruit trees and heavy grape vines, everything a riot of health and fecundity, “and they had thought that we were cruel to force things to go our way.” She smiles ruefully, stopping to adjust a vine whose fruit is just a little too heavy for it, branching fingers deft on the trellis.

“But this is such a happy garden!” Sam says, sounding scandalized at the idea.

Red laughs. “It is a very happy garden, little one, and we were both wrong. Fangorn wishes to be wild, Fimbrethil to be fruitful. The very first tame plants came to the Entwives, desirous of being helpful, and of traveling far and wide with their companions, while the trees of the forest want only to be let alone.”


	2. Chapter 2

Sam has never seen a more beautiful garden in his entire life, and he asks Red so many questions that she sets him on one of her branches so they can talk more easily. The height makes him a little dizzy at first, but she moves slowly and he gets used to it. It helps that Frodo is here, walking along with the others and talking Sindarin to Arwen and Aragorn. He's probably the prettiest hobbit Sam has ever seen as well as one of the nicest, and he's glad all over again that he gets to stay with him.

Even better, Red tells him that she'll see if she can get a cutting of some of those beautiful silver grapes Legolas brings with his lunch sometimes. The Shire is apparently a bit hot and damp for them, but Sam has gotten flowers from the Southern deserts to bloom there, so he's pretty sure he can do it with Red's advice. As she turns toward the center of the garden, one of her heavy red apples bumps against Sam's cheek, and he reaches to pick it before stopping dead and blushing. Red just laughs.

“I grow them to share, dear. Please, take it and tell me how I've done this year.”

“Thank you, ma'am,” he says, and plucks the apple, polishing it on his sleeve out of habit even though it's perfectly clean and sound all over. He takes a bite of the crisp, snow-white flesh and sighs, toes flexing with pleasure because it is definitely the best fresh apple he has ever had in his life. It's acid but not sour, and sweet but not cloying, the perfect balance for an eating apple, but it would also make fine pies and better sweet cider.

Red laughs when he tells her so. “Thank you, dear.”

“I wish I could grow good food out of my head,” Sam says, and she laughs again. “Really, ma'am. I sort of... well, 'envy' sounds mean and I don't feel mean about it at all, but I think it must be nice for nursing mothers. It's the closest any of us will come, isn't it?”

“Indeed it is,” Red says. “Your ways of getting and keeping children fascinate us. And it all goes so quickly!” She raises her voice again for the rest of the group. “Now we're approaching the nursery, where you can meet some of our little Entings. But first, in the interests of their safety, you'll have to leave a few things behind.” There's another hedge here, ringing off a little piece of this enormous garden, and standing beside it is an enormous Ent. He has rough, ridged, nearly-black bark, and glowers at them until he sees Legolas and smiles. Legolas smiles back and doesn't pull away from the death-grip poor Gimli has on his hand.

“Darkbough, don't alarm the dwarf. He has very bravely come here and will give you his hatchet with no fuss,” he directs this last as much at Gimli as Darkbough. Gimli sighs, but hands it over, handle first. Everyone has to surrender their cellphones because of theoretical sparks even though they're all already turned off because their ringing and buzzing annoys the trees, and everyone with a pipe has to turn it over as well as anything to light it with.

She sets Sam down and he digs his phone out of his pocket, a bit reluctant to part with it. Mr. Bilbo had bought it for him because he would need one in the city, and even though he knows no one would be angry if something happened to it through no fault of his own, he can't help but feel like he ought to guard it with his life. Darkbough handles everything very carefully, though, labels each person's things with a number scratched into a leaf, and gives one to each of them to simplify the claiming process when they come out.

Poor Gimli looks more nervous than ever when Red opens the gate to this inner garden, and Sam takes his other hand. He looks around and smiles down at him through the haze of his fox-red beard. Sam smiles back. “We won't let any of those fierce saplings hurt you,” he says, and Gimli walks through the gate laughing.

Inside is really just more garden, but there is a crowd of Entwives in the center, forming a loose circle around a beautiful, sunny little meadow with what seems to be incredibly tall grass moving against the wind. The Entwives have long hair like golden grain, or manes of massive grape leaves, their bodies clothed in vines. There's another one like an apple tree, but her fruit is greenish-gold, probably better for baking. One of the ladies is completely covered in wildflowers, and may be the prettiest thing Sam has ever seen. She turns to the group and smiles, her eyes a sunny gold.

“Good morning!”

Sam automatically bows, and Legolas follows suit. The combined effect is to force Gimli down with them, but he goes gracefully. “Good morning, Meadowskin! It has been too long.”

“Indeed it has.”

After introductions have been made, they're allowed to come forward and meet the curious Entings. They're whippy little green things, about as tall as a hobbit but only half as broad, and they have long, long fingers and branchy hair and enormous eyes. 

They're very strange, but Sam likes them immediately, and several come up to explore him with scratchy little fingertips, chirping, “Hoom, hoom, hoom,” in the tiniest little voices. He beams at them and tells them they're lovely, not even knowing if they understand Westron. They repeat the word back to him, and soon Sam finds himself teaching Basic Westron to a very attentive audience. Some of the others are stretched out on their backs on the ground beside Merry and Pippin, waving their feet in the air and looking as though they never thought to do such a thing in their lives before.

“Mustn't touch,” Gimli says, gently batting twig-fingers away from his beard. “That's personal. I suppose you can play with the rest if you like.” They probably don't parse the full sentence, but when he sits down, they all start examining the hair on his scalp without complaint. Legolas laughs at him, sitting in the grass with two curious Entings in his lap while three more watch wide-eyed as Boromir explains what the three-inch length of string they found in his pocket is. Gimli just sighs, and lets the Entings mess up his braids, which is really very tolerant for a dwarf. They think so much of their hair, after all. When Legolas thinks no one is looking he smiles at Gimli in a way that's not mocking at all, and Sam blushes a little to have seen it. 

After a while the Entwives pull their children off of the company, just like hobbit mothers would, and promise that they'll have refreshments in about half an hour. Red tells them to explore Fimbrethil until she rings a bell to call them back, and Sam is delighted to do just that. The group splits up onto the various paths that wind through the massive garden of the Entwives, and Frodo falls into step beside Sam, the earth warm under their feet.


	3. Chapter 3

Gimli can't help being a bit afraid of the woods. It's a dwarf thing, and not entirely cultural. Sure, the old people tell scary stories about the forest and many young dwarves know only stone halls or the city, but there's something deeply alarming about being surrounded by so much water. The city's tall buildings have the unnerving effect of hollow columns and too few, creating too much air space in a way that feels like collapse when the air isn't moving enough to remind him that he's on the surface and has other problems, but at least the buildings are made of stone and metal. They're solid and dry and if they don't taste quite like home, they're familiar and comfortable. 

Trees, however, are something else altogether. They make him feel like he's underwater, a place dwarves really do have no business being, and they move and they are wild. This would sound very silly to humans or hobbits, but he has a feeling that Legolas would understand if he told him. Stone has personality, but it's different. These ancient trees are flighty next to the very bones of the world, and Gimli is glad of Legolas's hand in his. It's weird to remember thinking of Legolas as spindly and strange-looking, when he has the beauty of a white birch or a shaft of sunlight through a flawless crystal. There's so much strength in that lanky frame, and his ancient eyes counteract the youthful effect of his beardlessness.

Gimli tries not to actually press against Legolas like a frightened dog as they follow Red through the forest. Most of the lecture is going in one ear and out the other, and it's not just nerves. There's also Legolas so close, full of his own sylvan wildness and lush scent and really, Gimli did not sign up to become a pervy elf-fancier. He's a bit annoyed at the effect Legolas's cool, nearly-slick skin is having on him, and that he's already thinking of how to best craft some delicate rings to adorn those long, spidery-gorgeous fingers. Still, never let it be said that Gimli son of Gloin was stupid enough to turn down the friendship of anyone honorable and good.

The garden is a profound relief, even if it is fearfully open, the way the surface always is. The tame plants have a settled feeling, though, more predictable than their wild brethren, and Gimli is fairly calm until they're headed into the Ent nursery and his hatchet is out of his hands. He feels naked without it, and is glad of Sam's tiny hand in his as they enter this strange garden within a garden.

The tiny green Entings are a bit alarming, but after Gimli gets their twig-fingers out of his beard, it's a lot like dealing with young dwarves, which is to say that the soundest strategy is to admit defeat and let them make an utter mess of his braids. After they've been released to wander the garden he pulls out all of his hair ties and beads, and looks for a place to comb his hair.

Legolas is still laughing at him with his eyes if not aloud, but he finds a pleasant spot under some kind of fruit tree and holds the ties and the beads for Gimli while he combs his tangled hair out and begins again. At first he's completely concentrated on getting his braids right, but after a while he feels Legolas's eyes on him and tries not to blush. This whole elf-fancying thing is ridiculous. Sure, meeting the Lady Galadriel had made him finally see the beauty of elves, but he doesn't think he's supposed to want to touch it this much. Legolas is all green and gold and sleek, and his hair is nearly as perfect as Lady Galadriel's and he's just watching Gimli, like there's something remarkable and maybe even beautiful in a huge-nosed and thickset dwarf attempting to tame his copper frizz and failing.

“May I help you?” Legolas asks softly, and Gimli nods.

“Please, it's hard without my mirror.” Mirrors are in Darkbough's little box of contraband, because of the way they can be used to focus enough sunlight to burn. Gimli can't help but feel a little insulted by that. He doesn't like handing over his hatchet, but he also can't ask trees to let any kind of axe near their children. That only makes sense, but it doesn't make any sense to leave him here without a mirror when the Entings have mussed him so badly.

Then again, this way Legolas is touching him. It may just be the hair on his head, but even that is fairly serious for dwarves. They don't let on about it as much, since people already know to go for the beard if they want to leave a dwarf no choice but to brawl with them. As it is Gimli just does his best not to shudder as those smooth, slender fingers slide through his hair. “It's three three-stranded braids together, right?” he asks softly, pushing two-thirds of Gimli's hair forward over his shoulder.

“Yeah,” Gimli mutters, thinking about the little four-strand braids Legolas uses to keep his hair out of his face. They look complicated, but he's pretty sure he could do them if he put his mind to it.

“You were very good with the Entings,” Legolas adds, after he has tied off the first braid and started on the second. “I doubt many dwarves would be so patient.”

This time Gimli knows that he's lost the battle and is blushing, and can only hope it's not creeping to the back of his neck. “Little ones need people to be patient with them,” he says in a low, brusque voice that reminds him of his father.

“They do,” Legolas says, tying off the second braid and beginning the third. “You know, your hair is very beautiful.”

Gimli makes a strangled little noise in his throat, startled. “You think?” As far as Gimli is concerned it's a bit of a nightmare, and entirely too orange and not red-gold enough.

“I do,” he says, already nearly done with the third strand. “It makes me think of fox fur, only with a more interesting texture.” He starts to weave the braids together, doing it properly and keeping it flat before binding it all together at the bottom.

“Interesting is one word for it,” Gimli says, patting at it and feeling that the beads are, if not where he would have put them, positioned attractively enough. “Thank you.”

“Any time. Shall we explore Fimbrethil?”

“We shall,” Gimli says, and takes Legolas's arm when they're standing again, letting him lead the way along one of many paths. This one winds around a large bed of some feathery green. Gimli still isn't very good at identifying vegetables, even if he eats so many more of them on the surface. Sometimes he feels a bit weak, and is still balancing out the supplements a dwarf needs when they go off the mountain diet. “Are these an herb, or carrot tops?” he asks Legolas, who smiles.

“Carrot tops, friend dwarf, carrot tops.”

“At least one of my options was right.” There's an Entwife beside the field, and of course Legolas knows her so they go over to pass the time of day with her. She has gold skin and feathery green hair, and seems very pleased to hear that Gimli enjoys carrots a great deal. She invites him to pluck one for himself and one for Legolas, and while his friend is carefully cleaning his, Gimli devours his own with the clinging black soil still on it, relishing the minerals.


	4. Chapter 4

Legolas has never even heard of an elf having a crush on a dwarf, but he has to assume that it happens, because it's happening to him. It probably started with his first visit to the city, all those years ago. At first dwarves had seemed impossibly stumpy and broad and singularly graceless, but now Gimli is beautiful in his eyes, the strong beauty of ancient mountain trees and evergreens and clean stone. He studies his friend as they stand beside quiet watercress beds, watching the clear autumn light play on his hair. He's still so young, raw and unfinished and perfect, like a tower before the vines begin to clothe it. Legolas can pick out the shape of his heavy bones, the thick strength of them waiting for the decades of filling out ahead. In a hundred years Legolas will look the same, and Gimli will be a dwarf in his prime, stocky and a little soft with it, wide enough to nearly fill Legolas's arms. A hundred years after that, and the grey might be starting in that vivid hair, so soft that it's nearly uncontrollable. Maybe he'll go white instead, and begin to really look like a red fox.

Unaware of his companion's musings on time and mortality and dwarven beauty, Gimli is completely involved in the harvesting of potatoes. Everyone is energized and refreshed after lovely salads, sips of Ent-draught, and for those who wanted them, strips of dried rabbit, which the Entwives only eat when they're about to set new sprouts. (“Expecting, but for Entwives,” as Sam had said after listening to Red's explanation of the presence of meat on an Entwife's table.) Now Gimli and Sam are filling basket after basket with dusty tubers. 

Beside him, Nightleaf laughs. “I really shouldn't have mentioned wanting a bit of help with this stretch. The poor things are supposed be on a tour.”

“You know hobbits love earth like dwarves love stone,” Legolas says, gazing fondly out at his two little friends. Frodo has gone on with the rest of the group, and Legolas knows how much it means to be entrusted with Sam, even in a place as safe as this. Boromir calls Pippin blonde, and Legolas supposes that his brown curls are at least bright and shot with a little true gold, but Sam is the real thing, looking like a sun-star that has somehow picked up its own shallow roots and decided to dig potatoes.

“Such hasty little things,” Nightleaf says fondly, and Legolas knows that she means him, too.

“Surface plants are supposed to be green, right?” Gimli calls, and Sam shakes his head.

“Not taters, Gimli!” He trots down the row to Gimli, dusting his hands. “When they're green it means they have poison in them. Only a bit, though. Nightleaf, ma'am?”

“You're already so kind to help,” she says, her dark, oily leaves rustling as she strides over to them, “The poison won't harm us, and we like the bitter taste.”

Gimli looks slightly traumatized, and Sam pats his shoulder. “Only a little poison, Gimli. Hardly enough to hurt a strapping great thing like you. But the Gaffer was always very definite about it, since green taters can do a world of harm to the little ones and anybody else delicate.”

“And he is very right to be particular,” Nightleaf says, taking the potato from Gimli and popping it into her mouth with the earth still on it, crunching it down in a moment. “You two really must take the rest of your tour,” she says, “but are you getting everything you need, child of Aule?

“It's hard to say, ma'am,” Gimli says, absently scrubbing his hands on his shirt. Legolas finds himself fascinated by the motion, and really wishes there were epic poems about being a pervy dwarf-fancier to give him the same kind of textual support that Arwen and Aragorn have. “I'm still balancing my supplements.”

Nightleaf ponders this, and then says, “Darkbough will have a package for you when you pass him again, and it should help you.”

Gimli of course thanks her so prettily that it would be annoying if he weren't totally sincere. As it is, Sam scampers off ahead of them to find the other hobbits and Legolas and Gimli are left to walk along behind them. Without the excuse of huddling trees Legolas can't take Gimli's hand, but they walk close together, somehow in step despite their disparate strides.

“I wonder if this is what the Shire is like,” Gimli says, “all sun and soil and tame plants.”

“A bit,” Legolas says. “I haven't been there for a long time, so I can't say for sure, but there are little bits of forest, and some very old trees left among the tame things.”

“And they really live in halls of soil?”

“Hobbit holes,” Legolas says, “cozy little hobbit holes with round doors. They're always warm and there's always room for another friend and the dirty jokes really do write themselves.”

“We'll have to ask Boromir,” Gimli says, and Legolas bursts out laughing in the way that always annoys his father so much, toothy and squint-eyed and genuine. He really hopes he isn't imagining how delighted Gimli looks with it.

They catch up with the group to find Sam perched up in Red's branches again, talking to her as one gardener to another as she explains the various types of cultivation engaged in by Entwives to the rest of the group. There's a semi-wild forest within the garden's gates because of the agreement between the maples and the Entwives, and they're given time to wander through it and marvel at how perfectly healed the little wounds of tapping are. These are young trees, and the sunlight streams easily through them and makes the place feel like one of Little Gondor's parks. Still, Gimli takes his hand, lacing their fingers together as if they do this every day. He seems determined not to look at Legolas, and turns an intriguing shade of pink.

Among elves, there are entire books on the etiquette of approach and Legolas can only imagine what the rules are with dwarves. Better to be too forward and regret that than infinite might-have-beens, however, and he strokes his thumb across the pulse in Gimli's wrist, describing a slow, meaningful circle as he looks up at the leaves where the sunlight glows through them. Gimli shivers almost too finely for Legolas to feel, and shifts a little closer, finally risking a glance up at him. The expression in his eyes really does resemble a fox's now, wide and sharp and braced for anything.

The words are ridiculous in Westron, but all Legolas can think to say is, “To me, you are starlight.”

“...They say starlight is an elf's favorite kind,” Gimli says, looking shy and sly and as young and as beautiful as the dawning of the world. By long custom the two of them should sing together and exchange some kind of token first, but there's no way Legolas can do anything but sink down onto one knee and kiss his friend. Gimli's arms around his shoulders feel strong enough to crush him, and his beard is so soft that Legolas takes a long moment to nuzzle his face into it before Gimli pulls away a little, flushed and muttering, “I shouldn't let you do that in public.”

“What about in private?” Legolas asks, gazing into Gimli's eyes and trying to decide whether the color is more like chalcedony or jade.

“That we can talk about that later,” Gimli assures him, and grins as he nudges Legolas back to his feet, taking his hand again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to airandangels for making the hobbit hole joke in A Substitute For Pudding, even if it really does belong to the world.
> 
> Also, anyone who wanted smut, do not despair. We will get back to these two.


End file.
